


Lost at Sea

by jasminepeony14



Category: Animal Kingdom (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:42:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23730256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jasminepeony14/pseuds/jasminepeony14
Summary: Deran makes sure that Adrian disappears to safety, but, afterwards, he is not sure why he himself is still here.
Relationships: Deran Cody/Adrian Dolan
Comments: 3
Kudos: 43





	Lost at Sea

“Are you sure?” is the question. The voice on the other end is huskier than Deran remembers, but the cadence is the same—careful, deliberate. Fourteen years later, she has not changed in that respect. It’s the one part of her that will probably never change. That, and her cold-hearted honesty.

“Are you saying you won’t?” sighs Deran lowly into the burner phone.

“No,” she refutes, “I’ll do it if that’s what you want. After I am done, the CIA will have an easier time tracking down a Himalayan yeti. I don’t do things by halves. You know that. That’s why you’re calling in your favor now after all these years. Because you know this has to be done right. So, if I do this, there’s no going back. It won’t matter if you change your mind someday. So, I’ll ask again: are you sure, Deran?”

He doesn’t hesitate even a beat.

“Yeah.”

Deran’s resolve does not change. Not even as tears swell in Adrian’s deep, ocean blue eyes.

“I love you too, you know,” Adrian sniffles. “I have since we were kids, and I probably always will. But you’re the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Adrian, adjusting the strap of his bag, disappears into the dark, and that’s how they end.

And still, Deran refuses to regret.

The questions come, of course, in days after Adrian leaves. Deran is wiping down glasses when Detective Pearce saddles up to his bar and drops them on the counter like loose change.

“Where is he?” Deran does not look up as he runs an off-white towel along the rim of a shot glass.

“Where’s who?” he deadpans. Pearce’s jaw clenches.

“Don’t play dumb. I get that’s worked for you in the past, and there was a time when you pulled it off _very_ well. But not anymore. You’re smarter than you let on. Where is he? Where’s Adrian?”

The towel swirls around, bending into another turn.

“How should I know? We broke up a few nights ago, and he stormed out. I haven’t seen him since.” Not a lie. If only…

“Coincidentally, no one else has either,” Pearce says urgently. “His sister reported him missing. At first, we thought he had run, considering the time he’s facing, except all signs point to the fact he had come to terms with going to prison. He had told his family, was putting his affairs in order. There’s no activity on his credit cards. No outgoing calls or texts from his cell phone. No sightings of him anywhere.”

Which means that Adrian has crossed the border undetected. That she had kept her promise. Good. That much Deran did right.

“Did you kill him, Deran?” 

The towel stops mid-round, and Deran finally looks up.

“I’d never hurt him.” Not physically anyway.

“What about your brothers?”

Deran doesn’t respond, because they both already know the answer. Shaking his head, Pearce stands.

“You Codys are disease,” he accuses. “You infect everything and everyone you touch. And there’s no cure. Even your love is a death sentence.”

Pearce walks away, his stride confident, his shoulders stooped. Deran sets the glass down and, tossing the dirty towel over his shoulder, presses his palms against his bar and bows his head. He stands like that until his forearms ache unbearably under the strain of his weight.

A month passes, and the questions die out with the last of the summer sun. From their grave dirt spring the rumors. Adrian is dead, scuttle the whispers along the shoreline. Murdered. Shot in the head. Knifed in the back. Bludgeoned with a bat. Deran or Pope or Craig or J or some combination thereof wielding the weapon. Silenced so he will never spill the pillow talk that occurred between him and Deran. They vary in color, shape, and sound, but their skeletons are the same:

Adrian is dead. That is the fate, after all, of all those who wander into the arms of a Cody boy. _Remember Catherine?_ they murmur over beers and around beach bonfires _. You know, Baz’s wife? Disappeared overnight like a ghost._ And _Remember Nikki?_ they mumble into marijuana smoke and between lines of coke. _Banged two Codys and ended up dumped half-dead at the ER door. Remember? Remember?_

Remember? Yeah, Deran remembers. How can he forget when Adrian is everywhere? In their closet, where his clothes hang tauntingly clean and bereft of his scent. In their shower, where his body wash sits half empty on the rack. On their deck, where his surf boards lean dry against the railing and aching for ocean waves. In Deran’s phone, his name next to a number no one will answer.

Adrian is dead. A rumor. Hopefully, just a mere rumor. But it is true that Deran is haunted by what is gone.

Funny, though, how rumors can be both toxin and tonic. The Codys’ reputation, which had sagged dramatically as Smurf’s corpse grew colder, burgeons with a gusto. To do away with Adrian, who Deran so clearly loved and had loved for so long, is heartless. Terrifyingly heartless. And people take note. Smurf might be gone, but her blood is plentiful, and her ruthlessness is alive and well in it. Riding that high, J and Pope solidify the family’s grip on Oceanside’s underbelly in the war they wage against their cousins, the doomsday preppers, who, in the end, had prepared for every apocalyptic scenario except the one that ends their world. 

That fall, Deran digs more graves than he cares to count. But counts he does. Five. Five times he looks up at the desert sky from six feet down and considers asking Pope to go ahead and shovel the dirt and sand back in and bury him and the body both.

It’s well into Spring before worry takes root in his brothers. Before, they’ve all been too busy with their lies and power plays, their jobs and their guns, to notice he has been just going through the motions of living, robotic and soulless in every moment. Even fucking is a chore. Something to do with random, faceless men to pass the time and blunt the pain. One guy, Hosea, a kid barely on the right side legal who’s summering in Oceaside, gets into his head that Deran is a conquest he can champion. It’s not Deran’s dick he’s after—that Deran gives up easily. He wants something harder to get. Something only one boy has ever achieved.

Something only one boy will ever achieve.

Yet, Hosea refuses to accept that, and Deran’s disinterest is just fuel on a pile of matches. The kid excels at lying in wait, popping up whenever Deran finds himself alone. Outside the beach showers. Outside his bar. Outside Smurf’s place. Or he should he say Pope’s place? Whatever, there’s no point in making the distinction. And, anyway, regardless of the setting, Deran gives the kid the brush off. Admittedly, he assumes Hosea will get bored or figure out that chasing after Deran is like chasing after dissipating smoke. He doesn’t think getting pissed off is worth the energy.

But then the kid shows up at his house. His and Adrian’s house, just standing there on their deck, pawing at one of Adrian’s boards as he sips a beer he took from their fridge. And Deran’s nerves go from numb to five-alarm hot in three seconds flat.

Hosea glances over a tone shoulder with a cool, dark eye and smirks.

“It was you,” he says. Despite his blinding, boiling fury, Deran, startled, blinks.

“What?”

“It was you,” Hosea repeats as he lets go of Adrian’s board. “Whatever happened to poor Adrian Dolan, it was you who did it to him.” Curiosity creeps in like the feral, diseased cat it is.

“What makes you say that?” Deran demands.

“Well, I know smart money says it was Pope, literally, according to a bookie friend of mine. But smart money can’t see your face right now. You wanna kill me. You wanna kill me for standing where he stood. You don’t want anyone touching his memory, and you sure as hell didn’t want anyone touching him, did you? So, if he had to go, then you had to be the one to send him off.”

For the longest second, Deran’s heart stops. His fingers, remembering the gun tucked into the back of his pants, twitch. The kid’s right—Deran is going to kill him. The fact Hosea is an adored son of some bigshot LA suit with cartel ties is inconsequential. People will assume a lover’s spat that went from sour to rotten. That Hosea had failed to take heed of Adrian’s “disappearance.” His bereaved daddy would catch wind and pay handsomely for the cartel bullet that would burrow into the flesh between Deran’s eyes. Which was all fine with him, because he’d take the truth with him.

His hand starts to move back into the subtlest of reaches.

“Bet you did it so he didn’t realize it was happening,” Hosea laughs into his beer can. “You put something in his drink, or maybe you just got him drunk. You fucked him one last time, that’s for sure, probably all slow and gentle and shit. And then you held him until he fell asleep. And then you killed him. Poison in his drink. A clean shot to the back of the head. Either way, he went not doubting for a second that you loved him. Because you did. You still do.”

Deran’s hand falls back against his thigh.

“Get out,” he says tiredly. “Don’t come back.”

Deran is lulled into a false sense of relief as Hosea seemingly keeps his distance, allowing Deran to return to the mundane motions of daily existence. His brothers vibrate with the excitement and anxiety of a new job, but Deran is bereft of anticipation. He merely does as instructed: Shows up when summoned. Obtains the necessary tools. Drills into the safe. All goes according to J’s plan—except for the part where Deran is shot in the gut.

He loses blood and consciousness fast in the backseat of the getaway car. His brothers argue about who’s to blame for the clusterfuck and whether Deran’s gaping wound requires more than a home first aid kit.

Sinking into the darkness, he hopes they argue long enough for him to slip away unnoticed. 

Pope and Craig take him to Hosea and, in doing so, make a deal with the devil. Hosea is only too happy to admit Deran into his beachfront condo and arrange for a concierge doctor who carters to the rich and unreputable to patch him up, because he knows the Codys will owe him, and the kid is surprisingly entrepreneurial.

“We’ll pay you back,” Pope, sitting at Deran’s bedside, vows. “For the doctor fees.”

“That’s not necessary,” Hosea replies as he threads his fingers into Deran’s limp hair. Tethered by oxyen mask and monitor wires, Deran is too weak to pull away. “I rather prefer your brother alive.”

“We’ll pay you back,” Pope repeats. Shrugging, Hosea smiles.

“Well, if you insist, there is something I can use your expertise with.”

Drifting into unconsciousness, Deran dreams of Adrian. Adrian, safe and well and far, far away from the sink hole that’s sucking Deran in. 

Hosea’s racket is flesh. Bodies living and dead. Whole and in pieces. Female and male. Adult and child. The implications turn Deran’s stomach—there are lines that even Codys won’t cross, few and far between they may be. But preservation of their bloodline has always won out—is the one instinct that they cannot override—so his brothers dirty their hands. A rival has stolen one of Hosea’s shipments, and the Codys are tasked with stealing it back. Deran isn’t privy to the details, and he prefers it that way. He wants deniability when Satan finally summons him down. Of all his sins, the theft of souls is not going to be one of them. When Craig comes to see him after the deed is done, his face is made gaunt by the shadows of his shame.

“…Was it worth it?” Deran croaks.

“You’re our brother,” replies Craig, his voice stilted. Turning away, Deran stares up at the ceiling.

“So, no, it wasn’t.”

Once the doctor declares that Deran is fit enough to return home, he tells Hosea not to alert his brothers.

“You shouldn’t be driving,” Hosea murmurs over a glass of whiskey.

“There are these things called ‘taxi’s’,” Deran counters gruffly. “No driving required on my part.”

“Do your brothers know?”

“Know what?” Taking a leisurely sip, Hosea licks his lips.

“That you’d rather be with Adrian.” By this, Hosea means “dead.” Do they know that Deran would rather be dead?

“Yeah, they know.” Because his brothers know that Deran, despite choosing them, would rather be with Adrian. Choosing them kept Adrian safe by making him irrelevant. If Adrian doesn’t lead to Deran, who inevitably leads to his family, then he holds no real value for anyone hoping to get to the Codys. His brothers know this—know that Deran choosing them isn’t really Deran choosing _them_ —but what they don’t realize is that, in lieu of being with Adrian, Deran doesn’t care if he ends up dead sooner rather than later. Dead, living without Adrian—same thing.

“Summer’s almost over,” Hosea announces, setting down his glass. “I’m going back to LA in a few days. Not sure if I’ll be back next year, but I have a feeling you won’t be here either way. So don’t worry. I like a good hunt, but it’s no fun when the prey would rather throw himself off a cliff than get caught. Time to cut my losses.”

And just like that, Hosea writes him off, like any good purveyor of flesh does with damaged goods. He calls Deran a taxi, and the last Deran ever sees of him is his slim body leaning against a doorframe, his heartbroken grin supping at a drink.

The taxi drops Deran at the pier, and, smoking, he stares out at the calm blue. There are no waves today, just placid azure stretched from beach to horizon, and the air has the cool herald of autumn in it.

It’s not a bad day to die.

A step off the pier. Swim until his arms and legs give out. Let the deep claim him. A bit of an ignominious end yet more peaceful than the alternative that waits for him in the barrel of some enemy’s gun. And maybe the sea will grant him a favor and ferry his bones to a place of rest nearer to where Adrian is. Yeah, that would be nice, to sleep in the same part of the ocean Adrian now surfs in, and perhaps Adrian will feel him and know that, in the end, Deran chose to go with him after all.

He takes one last drag of the cigarette, drops it to the wooden planks, and toes out the ember.

When he dives in, there is barely a splash, so smooth is his entry. So firm is his resolve. Thus, the hands that fish him out are not welcomed. He fights them, throwing blind punches and kicks, but there are more of them, and, to make his limbs compliant, one delivers a blow to the head, knocking him out cold.

Fiona Saito looks little different than she did when she and Deran met at age fifteen in a foster home. Her hair is still styled the same, loose curls brushing against a petite set of shoulders, and her skin still has that bronze California glow to it, though he doubts she surfs anymore. The real visible difference is that she is dressed like the mogul she has grown up to be. Clad in a Chanel suit of creamy peach, she is fingering the rim of martini glass as Deran awakes, head throbbing and hands cuffed behind his back.

“I asked if you were sure,” she murmurs huskily. “You lied.”

“…I didn’t,” he replies. He jangles his handcuffs. “Are these really necessary?’

“Seeing as you are inclined to throw yourself to your demise and that we are sitting on a third-floor balcony, yes, quite necessary.” Surveying their surroundings, Deran concludes that they are probably at one of the posh hotels that have been popping up around Oceanside lately as gentrification spreads slowly through the town like a plague.

“Why are you even here?” he asks casually. “Don’t you have a cyber empire to run?” Fiona smiles toothlessly.

“Did you forget how good at multitasking I am? I can take care of business and keep tabs on you at the same time. You Codys are not as sneaky as you think you are. Especially since Smurf died. She took all your family’s finesse and subtlety with her.”

“What do you want, Fiona?”

“For you not to drown yourself like a dumbass,” she says simply, her dark almond eyes pinning him down. “But I recognize that, short of locking you up somewhere, you will off yourself if that’s really what you want to do. Is that what you want, Deran?” Grimacing, Deran tries to yank his hands free, but it’s futile. Even if he did manage to slip the cuffs, Fiona’s goons, who stand guard on the other side of the balcony’s glass sliding door, would catch him in a blink.

“Why do you care?” he snaps. “We both know how it ends for me anyway—dead in jail or just dead. At least this way I go out on my own terms.”

“I care because when I was girl with not much to look forward to and thought a bottle of pills would make me feel better by making me feel nothing, a boy threw those pills away and took me to the beach. He took me to the beach the next day and the day after that. He kept taking me to the beach until I had something to look forward to.”

“That debt has been paid,” Deran half-whispers.

“You mean by making your boyfriend untraceable?” Fiona clarifies. She shakes her head. “No, that didn’t take much effort on my part. A couple keystrokes during my morning coffee and, walah, poof! Gone. But I wouldn’t have done it if I had realized that the one I was actually disappearing was you.”

“Fiona—”

“You were right not to go with him,” she blazes on. “Disappearing at the same time would’ve been too suspicious. But if you go now, if the world has reason to believe you’re dead, then no one is going to think twice.”

“My brothers will,” Deran argues, snorting. “They’ll know.” Fiona shrugs.

“Maybe, but they are selfish and self-centered. You’re the only that ever gave up something you wanted without the expectation of quid quo pro. They might suspect the truth, but, in the end, they’ll get wrapped up in themselves and won’t pursue it. In fact, if they care about you at all, they’ll make themselves believe it.”

“…They’re my family.”

“And they’re killing you.” Fiona leans back in her chair, her fingertips sliding down the stem of her glass. “They are making you so miserable you threw yourself into the ocean. Think carefully about what you want, Deran. I’m offering you an ending you honestly don’t deserve. But, once, you were a person worth saving, and you saved me, so here’s your chance to get out. To start over. To be with the man you love and to be a person worth saving. So, I’ll ask you one last time, Deran Cody: what do you want?”

A week later, there is an article in the local paper on page five, second column from the left below the fold. The title?

“Man Believed Lost at Sea.”


End file.
